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The Idle Index

The Idle Index is a new online project offering free screensavers created by artists, animators and filmmakers based in, or with links to, Leicester.

The Idle Index is a new online project offering free screensavers created by artists, animators and filmmakers based in, or with links to, Leicester.

This initial set of screensavers has been commissioned by Phoenix for Leicester Art Week 2018. The project will continue to grow and add more pieces to the index over the next year.

Screensavers have persisted as a common feature of digital interfaces (computers, TVs, blu ray players etc) long after their original purpose – to protect monitors from burn-in – has become obsolete.

While some systems still utilise them for practical purposes such as security, they serve for most as reminder of our own inactivity – acting as prompts to continue working, browsing, watching or shopping.

The screensavers offered by The Idle Index place artworks into the forgotten corners of our digital space to explore ideas of work, leisure, and usefulness.

The screensavers are available to download for both Windows and Mac OS. The links will take you to a dropbox page where you can download the screensaver installer files. Mac users will need to unzip the downloaded file and ctrl+click on the installer file to open it.

Daniel Cowlam - Thinkers

“My work often borrows and distorts imagery from novels, broadcasting and design history. Thinkers draws from old animation and advertising. Long-legged but otherwise limbless figures march forward (or backwards) across the screen getting nowhere.”

Anoushka Goodwin - Cleansing Circuits

Cleansing Circuits is a screensaver animated in the Cute Cut video editor app. It is a mash up of the artist’s pseudo spirituality and experimenting with what our personal mobile devices can be pushed to do creatively.

Sam Jones - Law of Objects

Les Hayden - Dinosaurs at Night

“I wanted to fill the scene up with hundreds of people, but all the extra silhouettes kept crashing the software. So instead of finishing the scene with hundreds of little characters, I used one very big one…”